Murray

As I mentioned in a previous blog, in my Victorian Literature class we have recently been studying some of the works of Lewis Carroll including Alice in Wonderland and also some of his poetry. Janet Murray talks about immersion as generally being an experience where the individual is somewhat lost within the text/game/movie/etc. In one of Carroll's poems "Jabberwocky" there occurs a particularly interesting form of immersion.
In my opinion it is a very brief, strange trip into another world...a completely bizzare surreal world only Carroll could create.  read more »

I have thoroughly enjoyed Murray's ideas on immersion (and everything we have read on her in general), although this topic of 'Regulating Arousal' on pages 234-237 of the handbook seem to me a bit off.

And I quote, "The objects of the imaginary world should not be too enticing, scary or real lest the immersive trance be broken. This is true in any medium. If a horror movie is too frightening, we cover our eyes or turn away from the screen. If a romantic movie is too directly arousing, audience members may start necking instead of watching the characters."  read more »

I'm not a big fan of text adventures, mainly because they're somewhat archaic with respect to current technology, but I actually a better time with Zork than I thought I would. Despite the irritation of looping in place several times, I did notice a sense of immersion, much like Janet Murray was speaking of. The game was much more descriptive than the other text adventures I had played so far (every item in the room and object you can interact with is illustrated in fine detail, such as the bag of food being "a brown cloth sack smelling of hot peppers"), and I especially liked the descriptions of the battles and of each individual action that you and your opponent take (e.g. the thief delivers a swift thrust, but you gracefully dodge to one side, etc). The diction used to tell you about each location and event paints (at least in my mind) a vivid picture, and I did seem to get a sense of spatial awareness in each room and during each battle (how can you dodge around if there's no space around you?). Zork is, in my opinion, far superior to Adventure, mainly because the parser is more intelligent and the gameplay is more interesting.  read more »

I found Murray's discussion of immersion to be casually interesting, but not engrossing. What is more interesting to me is the fact that reading it produced a "duh" factor in my mind. This has nothing to do with her writing or content, but more to do with the fact that humans have for a very long time, if not always, been incredibly immersive beings. Although she does into details about MUDs and LARPing that are somewhat specialized niches of immersion in participatory narratives, the core idea of that immersion probably makes sense, and is entirely applicable, to the lives of everyone in this class. Just look around campus to see everyone staring at their laptops, ears plugged with iPods, or reading a novel or textbook for class.

Murray mentioned silent reading and the fears everyone had about people withdrawing in "secret" to read anything from medical encyclopedias, religious texts, or erotic literature. It was just another way for people to do something, think about things, and develop thought processes that no one else could no about.  read more »

Janet Murray defines the "four essential properties of digital environments" (p71 of 'From Additive to Expressive Form') as being able to "separately and collectively make [the computer] a powerful vehicle for literary creation" in which the digital environments are marked by "procedural, participatory, spatial, and encyclopedic" elements (classified into "interactive" and "immersive" categories). I think there might be one more 'property,' but I'm not sure if it's necessarily 'essential' (perhaps it's 'inevitable'?) – and, well, a lot of the discussion that could be made for or against Murray or myself kind of depends on certain definitions of words or concepts.  read more »

Murray mentions T.S. Eliot and the term "objective correlative," which is "the way in which clusters of events in literary works can capture emotional experience." She continues to argue that computers (and therefore their video-game descendants) create the same sort of objective correlative - a means of relating this simulated world to our tangible life. Every video game in itself is a system, with a set of rules that govern how, when and where the correlations will be made. Somehow, through interaction on the TV or computer screen, responses are triggered and anger, fear, laughter, and pride can be produced.

According to Murray, the interactive "video game" is simply a new art form, a new style of narrative, and an addictive one at that because of it's participatory nature (this would be the main distinction from literature, a painting, etc.). This raises the question, then - are all video games inherently art? Super Mario Bros.? Halo 3? If art is intended to produce a reaction and/or make a statement, don't video games qualify as well?  read more »

I found it really interesting how some users of ELIZA actually believed it to be a real person, despite the technological limitations of its programming and the fact that its users were INFORMED of the fact of its artificiality. I remember using ELIZA one time in the Orlando Science Center, and I found it comprehensively limited (and pretty funny as well). I've heard that there are additional, more sophisticated interpreters exist currently, but I haven't tried them myself. In any case, the fact that the creator eventually defected to the cause of warning against artificial intelligence is a very intriguing concept--a concept that brings to mind ideas of old science fiction movies, such as "The Terminator", "A.I.", and "2001: A Space Odyssey". I, however, personally consider it impossible for artificial intelligence to reach the complexities of the human psyche, as it would be impossible to engineer a program to produce such emulation without an adequate understanding of the inner workings of the human brain.  read more »